More Human

Does God exist? It’s a question no thoughtful person can ignore. For philosophers, it is a topic of perennial discussion and dispute. There are many arguments on both sides of the issue, and perhaps the most famous of them has to do with the reality of evil: Does all the suffering we see in the world make it irrational to believe in God, or can faith be reasonable even in the face of evil? On this episode of More Human, you will hear a debate between two Tri-C philosophers: Matthew Carey Jordan, the dean and chair for the humanities at the college’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Humanities Center, and Sam LiPuma, a professor of philosophy at our Western Campus in Parma.     If you'd like to view the PowerPoint slides used by Dean Jordan and Professor LiPuma, copy and paste this URL into your web browser: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PG4QQ4ojTjLSCTMngZIMRcEXx-EYoplt   If you’d like to see a videorecording of the debate, go here: https://tri-c.webex.com/recordingservice/sites/tri-c/recording/749ba2aa6628103c98e672d833eb8372/playback

[Note: Technical problems resulted in problems with the audio levels in this recording. We hope you enjoy the conversation nonetheless!]    Carnegie Mellon professor Dr. Nico Slate recently visited Tri-C to talk with students about his new book Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race. While in Cleveland, he sat down with Dean Jordan to discuss the book and broader aspects of the work he does as a scholar, educator, and citizen. For more information about Brothers, visit https://tupress.temple.edu/books/brothers

Who is Flannery O'Connor, and why should we care? On this episode of More Human, Dean Jordan talks with philosopher and priest Damian Ference about the great "Southern Grotesque" author's work, including the value of "long, loving looks" at the mundane, race and racism, "offers of grace, usually refused," and more. Anyone interested in American literature, philosophy, or religion will enjoy this conversation.    For more about Fr. Ference's book Understanding the Hillbilly Thomist, visit: https://bookstore.wordonfire.org/products/understanding-the-hillbilly-thomist

On this episode of More Human, Dean Jordan is joined by Dr. Nathan King, author of The Excellent Mind, who was in Cleveland recently for a series of events with Tri-C students, alumni, faculty, and staff. This conversation continues the theme of those events: what does it mean to be an intellectually virtuous person, why does it matter, and how can we inculcate intellectual virtue in ourselves and others?

Holly Ordway is one of the world's leading J. R. R. Tolkien scholars and a friend of Cuyahoga Community College. Dr. Ordway is the author of the 2023 book Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography, and on this episode of More Human she joins Dean Jordan for a conversation about some of the ways in which Tolkien's faith informs the world of The Lord of the Rings, why Tolkien is worthy of our attention, and more.

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the poet laureate of the great state of Ohio. On this episode of More Human, she talks with Dean Jordan about her life and career, Appalachian culture, Ohio poets, and why poetry matters. She also offers some practical advice on approaching poetry for people who are unsure how to engage with it.

Is it okay for doctors and nurses to "hasten death"? That is, if a patient is terminally ill and wants to die, should medical professionals be able to help them do so? Tri-C philosophy professor Sam LiPuma has co-authored a book on this topic, and on this episode of More Human, he joins Dean Jordan for a spirited but civil discussion about it. If you're looking to gain a better understanding of the main issues at play in debates over euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and MAiD, this conversation is a great place to start!

If you’re interested in hearing what it’s like to be a student in Tri-C’s Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Scholars Academy, this episode of More Human is for you! Recent graduates Lydia Lax and Derek Yost join Dean Jordan to talk about their experience at Tri-C and the Mandel Scholars Academy’s recent trips to Oxford, England, and Rouen and Paris, France.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the summer of 2023, at least from a news media perspective, was that significant numbers of serious, informed, sober-minded people became persuaded that the U.S. government really may have extraterrestrial spacecraft, or even the bodies of intelligent, nonhuman beings, in its possession. In this truly "out there" episode of More Human, Dean Jordan talks with philosopher and UFO-interested layperson Steve Brown about whether we should believe this is true, what it means to be "critically open-minded," and what the existence of intelligent nonhuman beings would mean for our understanding of our place in the universe. The presentation by Dr. Brown that inspired this podcast conversation ("Philosophy Professor Being Critically Open-Minded about Aliens") can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LELPrDnuMuE&t=1118s

Dr. Timothy K. Eatman is the inaugural dean of the Honors Living-Learning Community and Professor of Urban Education at Rutgers University—Newark. Among many other leadership and consultancy roles, he serves as a member of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Humanities Center’s National Advisory Board, and he recently joined Dean Jordan for a discussion of his own life and work, the role of the humanities in confronting social challenges, news ways of approaching honors education and the role of higher education in addressing racial issues in America. The episode of PBS Newshour in which Dean Eatman’s work at Rutgers—Newark is highlighted can be watched at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/at-this-college-academic-excellence-requires-passion-for-the-social-good, and the Langston Hughes poem “I Dream a World,” which Dr. Eatman shares during this episode, can be read online at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/at-this-college-academic-excellence-requires-passion-for-the-social-good.

In this episode of More Human, (a noticeably jet-lagged) Dean Jordan sits down with Oxford scholar Dr. Michael Ward to discuss the significance of the twentieth-century author and thinker C. S. Lewis. The many topics discussed include the relevance of Lewis to those who don’t share his religious convictions, the key to understanding The Chronicles of Narnia, and Lewis’s insights into the costliness and necessity of love.

On this episode of More Human, Dean Jordan sits down with the executive director of Ohio Humanities, Rebecca Brown Asmo, to discuss the work her organization does to advance the humanities across the state, as well as the relevance of the humanities to career pathways and their significance for anyone who desires to live a life of consequence. She also shares Saeed Jones's poem "If You Had an Off Button, I’d Name You 'Off,'” from his anthology Alive at the End of the World (https://www.readsaeedjones.com/).

Chuck Dull is the dean of Tri-C’s Information Technology Center of Excellence. On this episode of More Human, he joins Dean Jordan to discuss his career, the kinds of programs he oversees at the College, and the importance of humanities education to students in career-oriented academic programs.

This episode of More Human is a recording of the Tri-C Philosophy Club event, “East Meets West: Taking Religious Diversity Seriously,” featuring Pranav Ambardekar and Steven Brown of The Ohio State University. You may notice that this is quite a long episode; it includes nearly an hour of Q&A that took place after the formal presentation ended. If you’d like to view the slides the presenters used, you can access them at https://tinyurl.com/yc6432c7

Following up on a March 2023 event at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Humanities Center featuring the Aspen Institute's Weave: The Social Fabric Project, Frederick J. Riley and Michael Skoler sat down with Dean Jordan for an inspiring conversation about the work they are doing to restore trust and support community-building efforts across the country. For more information, be sure to visit https://weareweavers.org/

In preparation for the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Scholars Academy’s annual Roots of Social Justice: Alabama Civil Rights Tour spring break trip, Dean Jordan conducted a remote interview with Reverend Alan Cross, a native Southerner, Baptist pastor, and expert on race and religion in the American South. For more about Cross’s work and the topics discussed in this episode, see this NPR story from July 2020: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/883115867/white-supremacist-ideas-have-historical-roots-in-u-s-christianity. Cross is a contributor to The Bulwark, and his writing there can be found at https://www.thebulwark.com/author/alan-cross/. In 2019, he published an essay in the New York Times on religious freedom and the death penalty (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/opinion/alabama-domineque-ray-death-row.html), and he has also written on the dangers of “Great Replacement Theory” (https://thedispatch.com/article/christians-too-must-oppose-great/) and the role of Black slave preachers in setting the stage for the Civil Rights movement (https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/why-we-should-be-thankful-for-caesar-blackwell-the-alabama-baptist-slave-preacher/). His book When Heaven and Earth Collide: Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and the Better Way of Jesus, can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/When-Heaven-Earth-Collide-Evangelicals/dp/1603063501.

This episode of More Human, the third of three recorded on the campus of The Ohio State University, features a conversation with Dr. Donald C. Hubin, emeritus professor of philosophy and the founding director of OSU’s Center for Ethics and Human Values, as well as a member of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Humanities Center’s National Advisory Board. Topics discussed include Dr. Hubin’s career and writing on ethical issues pertaining to fatherhood, the moral philosophy of David Hume, how to approach moral disputes, and challenges facing colleges and universities moving forward. For more information on Dr. Hubin’s professional work, visit his OSU faculty webpage at https://philosophy.osu.edu/people/hubin.1. And do be sure to check out Monty Python’s “The Argument Clinic” at https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hwqn9.

This episode is the second of three conversations Dean Jordan recorded while on a recent visit to The Ohio State University: it features Dr. Jennifer Frey of the University of South Carolina on the links between happiness, virtue, and wisdom; her own religious conversion and the experience of being a woman and a Catholic in an academic field dominated by atheists and men; and the value of a liberal arts education. For more about Dr. Frey’s writing and professional activities, see her faculty webpage at https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/philosophy/our_people/directory/frey_jennifer.php. Her Sacred & Profane Love podcast can be found at https://sacredandprofanelove.com/, and the essay mentioned in this interview (“The Universe and the University”) is available at https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/the-universe-and-the-university/.

Dr. Piers Turner is an associate professor of philosophy at The Ohio State University, where he directs OSU's Center for Ethics and Human Values. On this episode of More Human, he sits down with Dean Jordan for a wide-ranging discussion of an interdisciplinary major at OSU for students interested in becoming more civically engaged, the challenges of identifying shared values and promoting civil discourse in a divided society, and the work of the nineteenth-century philosopher John Stuart Mill.

One of the most unique aspects of Tri-C’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Scholars Academy is its capstone course, HUM 2020: Community Engagement. In this episode of the More Human podcast, Professor Matt Laferty and Mandel Scholars Hannah Fuller and Emily Penner join Dean Jordan to discuss the work they did in Fall 2022 with EDWINS Leadership and Restaurant Institute.